After his embarrassing primary night, it’s clear that disgraced Senator Bob Menendez has not exactly endeared himself to the liberal base.
Nearly 40% of New Jersey Democratic voters rejected his scandal-plagued candidacy, and today, liberal Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch is out with a scathing column about how the machinations of the New Jersey Democratic Party forced Menendez on voters, in the face of his bribery case.
Bunch concludes: “It would be nice to think that Tuesday’s protest vote sent such a powerful message to Menendez that he’ll step aside, hop on his friend Salomon Melgen’s jet and fly off into the sunset. But that would allow the Democratic bosses like Norcross to pick his replacement. Is anyone else picking up the stench of rotting ham?”
Ouch.
Some highlights from the column, which can be found HERE:
“That means New Jersey voters knew nothing about Lisa McCormick, either, and yet an astonishing 157,983 people voted for her — correctly assuming that this anonymous, faceless person on the ballot had to be better than another six years of the lingering stench of corruption that is Bob Menendez.”
“But Menendez is in a league of his own. The facts of his corruption case that finally went to a jury last fall are pretty clear. A Florida eye doctor named Solomon Melgen donated or helped raise $750,000 for Menendez’s campaigns and provided the senator with lavish gifts like private jet travel to Florida, the Caribbean, and Paris, and stays at a posh getaway in the Dominican Republic, while Menendez used his clout as a senator to go to bat for Melgen in disputes with federal Medicare regulators, with the State Department over a port issue, and even to get visas for Melgen’s relatives.”
“Rather than express humility over his narrow escape from Leavenworth, Menendez responded to 2017’s hung jury news in the style of his fictional fellow New Jerseyite Tony Soprano, albeit with less class. ‘For those who were digging my political grave so they could jump into my seat,’ Menendez pronounced outside the federal courthouse in Newark, ‘I know who you are and I won’t forget it.’’
“Now he was speaking the family’s language. Norcross studied the angles and endorsed Menendez instantly, and Murphy, a Wall Street progressive who sees himself as benevolent philosopher-king, and Menendez character witness Booker, who can talk like Che Guevara when he’s not out raising money from hedge-funders, were close behind. New Jersey primary voters were denied a real choice.”